The Truth About Wormtail
by annuniel
Summary: Ever wonder what made Peter betray James and Lily to Voldemort? Would it be, perchance, a sycophantic and obsessive fixation with Sirius? Well, you never know....


_ It's been a long time since I bothered posting anything because I was so disgusted with the loss of the NC-17 section. But I miss the community here and it's about time I got back on the horse and started doing what I love:) I just hope my new, tamer stories are as well received.  
  
Obviously, I cannot claim to own these characters. Not making any money, blah de blah, J.K. Rowling, blah, Bloomsbury and Warner Bros., blah....   
  
A/N:This is just a sick little thought I had whilst re-reading PoA for the eighth time- what happened back in the 70's to make Peter Pettigrew want James Potter dead? Annuniel thinks she knows...this casts little Wormtail in a decidedly different light, which I kind of hate but it was just itching to be written. Once a slasher, always a slasher...  
  
Oh, and I suppose you could say this ties in with "One Wild Night", which unfortunately can't be posted here due to its erm...high content of er... well, guy-on-guy sex. You can read it at http://www.geocitites.com/annuniel/ownindex.html _  
  
  
**The Truth About Wormtail**  
  
Sirius was gorgeous, but then everyone knew that. If he'd been in one of those American teen high school movies he'd be the quintessential jock, working of course on the basis that "jock" referred to lettered-in-three-sports types and not to insulting Scottish people the way some English muggles use it.  
  
But I digress.  
  
Sirius Black had a following of girls, muggle and pureblood and everything in between. Everyone knew that. What everyone didn't know was that the girls weren't the only ones who could see it. They didn't know him, not really. Not the way I did.   
I watched him from my pillow as I pretended to sleep. He was simply beautiful; dark hair falling in dark brown eyes, being raked back with a careless hand the way I had seen him do so many times before.   
To tell him? Death, certainly, at least to my fragile ego. To have some pathetic creature fawning all over him- some _male_ creature, would surely fill him with disgust and pity. No, he would have a wife, and children someday, some ravishingly beautiful girl who would capture his heart and bear him sickeningly modelesque children. And I? I would be there at the wedding, my heart dying, wishing I had told him just once that he was why I got up in the morning all those tortuous years at Hogwarts.  
  
To say I hadn't noticed the way they had been acting lately would be a lie, I suppose; sitting back against my headboard and watching James follow Sirius, at my suggestion, down to the showers. I didn't want him here, pestering me to get up, and I knew I couldn't risk being caught gawking at Padfoot as he tried to shower.   
They were just being weird; I couldn't quite put my finger on it. In a million years I never thought of _that_.   
  
'Have fun?' inquired the teen witch portrait as they both stepped, grinning stupidly, into the deserted common room.   
'Not really,' Sirius shrugged, winking at her with the typical Black charm and making her lick her lips.  
'Just had a shower.'  
I hated that witch. She was too cocky, too knowing. Too friendly with James and Sirius, to tell the truth. Whomever she had been in life, the girl in the painting was the face I saw on Sirius' bride in my nightmares of his wedding. I hated her even more now from what she seemed to be suggesting about Padfoot and Prongs. I hated the lascivious smile she gave them and, even more, I hated the way it seemed to make James nervous. From my place at the foot of the stairs, concealed by my rat form and by the bulk of the bannister, I saw every furtive glance. But still I told myself no. Until that night, when I saw them. I thought I would go out of my mind; Sirius' perfect lips pressed against those of Gryffindor's most coupled-up quidditch player. Lily? Lily who? That seemed to be the theme of the day as the two dark-haired boys kissed frantically. I watched in disbelief, saw James' pale hands lift Sirius' shirt ever so slightly, his fingers dig lightly into the perfect tanned flesh at his waist. I burned. What would I have given, at that moment, to trade places with Prongs Potter? Or to bash his brains in, crack his skull with a large rock, maybe. I knew I should not think things like that about James. He was my friend. He did not know how I felt about Sirius, the beautiful man child whose tongue he was currently sucking.   
  
I think that night was the night I realy became a Death Eater. It would be four years before I had that mark burned into my flesh, before I became Severus Snape's fuck-puppet. But that night, when I saw James and Sirius enthralled in the kind of passionate embrace about which I had been dreaming since third year... that was the night I sold my soul.   
  
And those years later, after James was married... married to Lily, the bitch he dumped Sirius for. As though he hadn't had smething perfect, as though what he had with Lily could ever compare to the perfection that he had had and thrown away in Sirius. Idiot. I had seen, from my corner, how the marriage had broken Padfoot's heart, how through his laughter at the wedding his pain glowed like the last stubborn embers of a fire too soon put out.   
  
I swore, that day, dressed in my stupid formal robes, dancing with James' bride on her first day as Mrs. Lily Potter, that they would pay. Prongs, Lily, hell, Remus into the bargain- it didn't matter. Sirius deserved so much more.  
  
I remember the day he convinced them to let me be their secret-keeper in his place. He trusted me that much; I thought, he counted me worthy. It almost made me abandon my plans, so loath was I to be unworthy when he had placed his trust in me. There seemed no greater honour. But I did it for him. I knew he would never understand that; he loved James as much as ever and didn't blame him for choosing Lily. Lily and their child, truth be told, I had heard him tell Remus one night. Who could compete with that? As though he wasn't the most wonderful thing ever to walk the planet; as though some redhead slut and her accidentally-conceived brat could substitue someone like Sirius.   
  
I did it for him.   
  
I did it because James had hurt him, and at any cost I had to put that right. The Dark Lord wanted Harry, of course, but if James died into the bargain it made no difference to me why it was done. If Lily died it was even better.   
Oh, yes, there was guilt. Lily knew none of this; she did not, in the long run, deserve to die. Neither did she deserve to have her child killed, even if she lived. James, though... the hatred seething in my soul demanded vengeance.   
  
So I told him. The Dark Lord. He-who-must-not-be-named. You Know Who. I told the most evil being who ever lived where to find one of my best friends, his wife and their infant son.   
I killed them. So what?  
  
Well, Sirius was devastated. That's so what. And Sirius hated me for it, making it the worst mistake I ever made. And I sent Sirius to Azkaban. Selfish, disgusting, and I hated myself more than he possibly could as I hacked off my finger and disappeared in the wake of the blast. I hoped against hope he would escape, but I knew deep in my wreched gut that I had sentenced him to life with the Dementors. Damn my repulsive instinct for self-preservation. Damn the obsession that had prompted me to earn his hatred. I could have taken anything but his hatred, his disgust, his utter revulsion at the sight of me.   
  
His laughter echoed in my ears as I raced through the sewer, the smell of seared flesh in my rat nose. I hadnt' killed him, but I had killed somebody. Did it matter?  
Of course not. Everything was lost now. The Dark Lord destroyed, death eaters scattered...Sirius, beautiful Sirius, in Azkaban being tormented by the Dementors. Growing thinner, haggard and filthy. Hating me. Wanting me dead, cursing the faith he had put in me...I couldn't bear it. Better to stay a rat for now; no complicated emotions, no relentless self-pity. Just Scabbers. As Ron would put it, boring, pointless, stupid Scabbers the rat. Because it didn't matter anymore.   
  
  
_That's quite possibly the weirdest thing I've ever written! What the hell? I'm not even drunk, there's no excuse!!! But anyway, please review! _


End file.
